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Originally Posted by krystar
i also find interesting what this thread has brought up. in this thread and every other one, both sides have called upon either anecdotal evidence in form of "this person who i trust in math says it's ___" or computerized implementation evidence in form of "my ti-85 says its ____" or "this website says its _____" or "this programming language says its ____"
even the few arguments that have called into order of operations has clearly shown that even the same taught concepts have be interpreted incorrectly.
on the virtual internet, in the absence of math books that clearly spell out unchanging undisputed "the master rule", anyone can post up a webpage that claims that 48/2(9+3)=2 and can make it list high enough on google would have a legitimate shot of convincing other people that it IS in fact the truth. will it be really the future where the mob induced "truth" becomes the real truth?
according to our rennlist poll, the answer should be 2 by a factor of basically 3:2. if the margin were even wider...say 10:1, would it be possible that 2 be made the correct answer? are things like this up for democratic vote?
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The rules are arbitrary. We could do a poll on how to spell "check" in English. (check or cheque?). We would be arguing about arbitrary decisions accepted as "correct" by two different cultures and could argue endlessly. It's the same with this problem. The technical world accepts the rule that the 2 operates on the parenthetical term before the division. That's the way we do it. Someone else uses different rules.
The lesson I get from this thread is when you try to work across cultures, you can't simply use your own conventions, you have to be more explicit.